🔱 Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri ArunachalaRamanaya 🔱
🕉️
The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James
Part Five - Mountain Path: April – June 2013 - Excerpt
Note of 6th January 1978
🕉️
Swami Natanananda: What is meditation? Who can meditate? Can the body meditate? Can self meditate? Meditation is just a means of feeding the non-existent 'I'. The true sādhanā is to be vigilant, at all times, against the rising of this 'I'.
One way to prevent the rising of 'I' is to try to behave [inwardly as well as outwardly] in every situation as you think Bhagavan would behave. If you practise this, there will be less and less of 'I' and more and more of Bhagavan, until finally you will be swallowed by him.
Whenever peace is disturbed, it is due to the rising of 'I'. Peace cannot be enjoyed while 'I' is active. Therefore the only means to hold on to peace is to be self-vigilant, thus guarding against the intrusion of disturbing thoughts. Self-attention is not an activity, but a calm state of being vigilant, keenly watching 'I' and thereby preventing the intrusion of mental activity.
Meditation, which is a mental activity, is unreal, so it can never reveal what is real. Non-meditation, which is avoiding mental activity, alone can reveal the realίty. In the first mangalam verse of Ulladυ Narpadu Bhagavan says:
[...] Since the reality ['I am'] exists without thought in the heart, how to meditate upon that reality, which is called 'heart'? Being in the heart as it is [that is, as 'I am'] is alone meditating [correctly upon the reality].
Since thought is paying attention to second or third persons, the only effective means to avoid thought is self-attention. The rising of 'I' is attention to second and third persons, so attention to the first person alone can make 'I' subside.
The reason why Bhagavan emphasises that the appearance of the world is dependent upon the delusion 'I am this body' is to kindle vairāgya [desirelessness] by making us understand that 'I am the body' is the root of all misery, and that it must therefore be eradicated.
Cutting the branches or even the trunk of the tree of delusion is futile, because its root, 'I am the body', must be destroyed. It is destroyed only by self-attention. This is why Bhagavan says in verse twenty six of Ulladu Narpadu:
If the ego, which is the embryo [or root], comes into existence, everything comes into existence. If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist. The ego itself is everything. Therefore, know that investigating 'what is this [ego]?' is alone giving up everything.
We must fly on the two wings of viveka [discrimination] and vairāgya [desirelessness].
Sadhu Om: We all have a clear knowledge of our own existence, 'I am'. If we give importance only to that, and try to remain as it, that is self-attention, guarding against the rising of 'I', avoiding attention to second and third persons, and vigilance against the intrusion of thoughts.
In everything we do there is 'am'-ness: I am walking, I am thinking, and so on. If we attend to this 'am'-ness and try to abide as it that is sufficient. There is no need to be concerned about thoughts: let them come or go. Thoughts are only thoughts because we attend to them. If we ignore them, they do not exist. Our sense of 'am'-ness [asmi-tva] signifies our self-awareness or mere being. Mere being is the final goal. That is why Natananandar was saying that one day we will laugh at our present efforts.
🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱 🔱
